Further Thoughts on Music Discovery

There’s been a lot of press about a joint NPD Group/NARM study dealing with music discovery. The headline was that traditional radio still leads the way in music discovery. According to the survey, FM radio was the #1 way that respondents discover new music. Word of mouth came in second. YouTube was moving up fast, coming in 3rd, but other digital platforms lagged behind.

While traditional radio can be proud of its continuing leadership in this area, what does it really mean? Does this really surprise anyone? If so, that reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the state of media. Despite the growth of various digital forms of entertainment and media, most traditional media continue to show enormous reach. In the US, over 93% of all people over the age of 12 listen to the radio each week. According to Arbitron, in the most recent period surveyed, that translates to a weekly reach of 241.2 million people.